


For Death

by MiaGhost



Series: For Life, For Love, For Blood and Glory. [11]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Apex Games, Battle, Blood, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitalization, Hurt No Comfort, Memories, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Part 11 of LifeLoveBloodAndGlory, Self-Sacrifice, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaGhost/pseuds/MiaGhost
Summary: It's not the first time Wraith has taken a shot meant for him.
Relationships: Mirage | Elliott Witt & Wraith | Renee Blasey, Mirage | Elliott Witt/Wraith | Renee Blasey
Series: For Life, For Love, For Blood and Glory. [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591393
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	For Death

His eyes met hers across the room, their amber depths ringed with sleepless bruises and dull with resignation even through the fear he was so good at hiding. In that same instant, his shield splintered in a final flicker of light to match her own. She watched his hands racing for the reload as a gun fired, but she knew already that it was too late.

A flicker of a vision, screamed silently to her across the Void. Her partner blown to the floor by the killing round. The goodbye in his eyes. Wraith saw it before it happened, like she'd shifted just a heartbeat into another path.

So she _moved_.

She collided with him, fingers biting into skin as the shot exploded across her back in a searing fire that eagerly licked up her spine as she took them both crashing to the floor. She was blind when she tried to open her eyes, mute when the primal cry forced its way from her throat. Everything was nothing but the burning red that was consuming her, searing into her brain. She couldn't even grasp hold of herself, fear dragging razor claws across her flesh when she couldn't anchor herself in her own body.

Wraith kicked against the dark, clawing for breath, hissing in agony as her world whited out under the heat of the flames. Her veins boiled, her nerves popped in a smattering like gunfire, each rapid spasm of agony crushing her ability to even think. Wraith lost to it, collapsing under the insurmountable pressure.

Hysteria washed her away.

~.~

The first time Wraith took a shot for someone else, it was reactive. She survived in another mind in battle. There was no spare second for doubt, no sliver of space for second-guesses. The enemy was relentless, so she had to be too.

To hesitate was to die.

The Voices were her guide. Their words were law, were absolute. She bid their command, or she wouldn't come out alive. That was the first thing she had ever known, and they had never failed her.

So when they told her to dive, Wraith dove. She'd started moving before her eyes saw him, trusting in the Voices. She took the shot right in the chest, her armour whistling as the round gouged its defence and grazed her arm. The shooter went down easily and she rose to her feet as her Banner alerted her the squad was out. It was in surprise that she found herself turning to look at him, still sprawled in the dirt where she'd thrown him.

Mirage looked up at her with terrified eyes, the evening sun lighting the whisky tones and giving his marred skin a golden dust. The expression was gone when he found his feet again, but Wraith had seen. It was the first real peek that she'd ever had behind the veil of his persona, and a small scrap of something hidden deep in the core of her soul answered his gaze with a shiver.

When that battle was over he was different with her. It wasn't the first time he'd sat off by himself in the retrieval ship, quiet when the robot on their squad tried to engage him in conversation. The first time she'd been disarmed and left with only her knife to gut the soldier trying to kill her he'd avoided her eyes for weeks after. She knew he'd seen the animal that lived in her soul, the primal battle-lust that she hid. It had surprised her when her name still blinked beside his on the squad assignments the next Game.

But he was further different, after that. Whether because he knew she'd seen behind his mask, or because she'd moved quicker than he could, or because he had faced death more closely than before, she didn't know. She let him keep his space, and waited him out.

For Wraith, it was a startling turning point. Not just in her own self, but in the way she thought of the Voices. That day they'd commanded her to put herself in the line of fire on purpose, to save the life of the squadmate she'd been designated only six months before. Perhaps the most startling thing, though, was that she didn't resent them for it.

She'd stepped between Mirage and death, and part of her knew it would not be for the last time.

~.~

"Hush," she whispered, fingers slick with blood as they slipped over his lips, free hand settling on her rifle.

He groaned and struggled weakly under her, and she cursed their position as she set down the gun to hold his shoulder still. His heels dragged across the floor and made her curse, for it was a quiet noise that echoed much too loud in the small space. Wraith shifted again, her thigh pressing against the twitching knee and holding him there between her own leg and the crumbling wall. She leaned the weight of her other leg against his left, just in case.

The footfalls grew closer. She eyed the gun but he moved again, trying sleepily to buck her off, and so she was forced to press lower, shielding his body with hers as though she could somehow convince him to be quiet. Her thumb moved on its own; a smeared semi-circle against his cheek. The door opened, and the feet came inside. She held her breath.

They moved across the room, passing right by the shadowed little space she'd barely managed to haul him into, the loot bin that had caught Wraith's eye catching theirs. The clink of metal on metal, the sound of a rucksack being dumped on the floor and a zip being drawn open. Mirage's head tipped back and almost dislodged her precarious balance. She gave a gentle squeeze, hoping it would be enough to reassure him. The wound she'd been working on was still oozing onto the uneven wooden panels, leaking time.

The heavy painkillers that had him subdued would wear off in very _little_ time, designed to help stabilise a Legend but not put them out of action for long. It was already starting; his muscles shivering intermittently, his weak breath hot against her hand every time he stirred. If Pathfinder didn't get there soon she was going to have to pick the fight on her own, or risk losing Mirage. Her shields were low, and she was exhausted and bleeding herself, but she'd picked worse fights. It just happened that she'd picked those fights before she'd grown to care about the squads they gave her. If she could help it, this would be one more Game she wouldn't win alone.

If she could help it, they'd never have to assign her another squad. She'd keep this one alive.

"Been picked over." the gruff voice spoke, almost making her jump.

Adrenaline flashed through her veins and the primal creature in her chest stretched out, rejuvenated by the taste.

Not a solo, then. Could she finish him before his squad arrived?

She'd never doubted before.

But she'd never had anything to lose but her own life before, either.

~.~

"There! On the rooftop!"

Wraith swung her rifle in the direction the robot indicated, notching back the bolt and putting a bare ounce of pressure on the trigger a mere heartbeat after her eye hit the scope. The Kraber cracked loudly and she drew back the bolt in one long slide, already sweeping for the second shooter. Battle thrummed under her skin and she kept the pale thread of fear at bay with her focus. She knew there was a second. There was a third on the ground trading fire with Mirage but there had to be a second-

"No! Shit, I'm hit, I'm-"

The sniper cracked and Wraith felt her heart stop even as she snapped the barrel three inches left and squeezed. The round had barely even made contact before she was gone, nothing but a shimmer in the air behind her to hear Pathfinder's startled yell as she hurled herself from their vantage point.

The Void whispered urgently to her but she was an arrow, hair whipping behind her as she fell in a shallow dive. She hit the ground just right, pebbles skittering from her path as she flung the rifle over her shoulder and laid a hand on the grip of her Carbine.

The hardened expression of the man stalking towards her friend shattered when she lodged an elbow into his neck without stopping her pace, before she was leaning into her momentum to whirl on the ball of her other foot, the butt of her gun ramming hard into his stomach. His gun went off reflexively but Wraith was already behind him, stepping between worlds faster than thought, her knee connecting with the back of his thigh and, as she fell back onto her other foot, she kicked him hard behind the knee.

When he sprawled on the concrete with a terrified scream Wraith didn't even bother with sights; pulling the trigger and emptying the half clip between his shoulders to stop him squirming.

_The rooftop!_

"Wraith, look out!"

Wraith cut open the seam between times and fell backwards into the tug of the Void, but instead of turning for shelter she was in the open, ignoring the way the whispers in her head were falling into fuzz from overuse. Her muscles were alight with the heat-flash but she ignored that, too. Someone howled at her from another time but she didn't have _time_. He lay not far away, blood pooling around him, and she didn't think. It was instinct.

_You're in danger!_

"Wraith _no_!"

_WRAITH!_

The shot hit the vicinity of her back hard enough to knock her balance even without hitting her directly, and she stumbled and lost her grip. The familiar burn vanished and she drew a chilled breath of Arena air as her fingers closed around his shirt.

The sniper pierced her lower back with such precision that she screamed herself, before gritting her teeth and dragging him into the Voidstream with her.

They had to tell her, when she woke in the dark of night somewhere secluded in the Canyon, what had happened. Her memories were nothing but static and sharp pain. Mirage stayed at her side the whole time she lay recovering, and she was suspicious that he'd been there while she was still out, too.

She was lucky she still had use of her legs. Pathfinder had gotten to her fast enough to stem the bleeding, but the whole area ached headily from the regenerative knitting of whatever organ had had to be targeted by the heavy-duty meds.

Mirage had lost a lot of blood too. His face was pale when Pathfinder told them his prediction volume. Wraith knew by the way her own nausea rose in sympathy that she was near-fatally wounded herself. She wavered in and out of consciousness in the hours until sunrise and eventually had to snap at Mirage to stop hovering when they moved out into the dawn. They needed to be on the alert for the last three teams. He covered his wounded expression well, but she saw it anyway.

When he turned up at her dorm room that night, equally exhausted by victory and long after she herself had given up on sleep, she let him in. The heat of him curled silently beside her for the remaining hours of night was more of a comfort than the painkillers.

~.~

A machine beeped sleepily beside the bed. Another gave a soft wheeze. Somewhere far off, there was the hush of quiet footsteps. Then, an unmistakeable sound; the turning of a page. An old, familiar scrape of paper on paper. Elliot opened heavy eyes, blinking groggily in the dimmed light of the room.

His mother was reading by the light of the monitor behind her chair, her face grey and worn, only her eyes focused amidst the tired aura she carried. His stomach fell, knowing she was worried again, no doubt, on his behalf. His limbs felt heavy and unresponsive, so he kept still while he tried to wave aside the fog in his head to remember what he'd done this time, to be hospitalised.

The Game came to him in vague pieces; an ambush by the water, a night spent in ancient, destroyed office buildings. The sound of a bird crying across the canyon because someone had disturbed it. Pathfinder managing a particularly dicey Zipline that saved them from the drop and the ring, and left their opponents scrambling for cover.

A battle in a busy room, the smell of blood and gunpowder. The glint of his shields when…

His brow scrunched painfully while it trickled back, anticipation and a fear without source. He groaned as his leg ached suddenly, brightly.

She set aside the book instantly and her hands intercepted his as it crept down the sheets towards the pain.

"There you are," she whispered soothingly, warm fingers squeezing, "always one to sleep forever, eh?"

Her attempt at humour was weak and fell flat. As he looked at her worried, relieved face, thinking how it would hurt her to know how much trouble he had sleeping these days, the pieces finally clicked together.

"…aith," he rasped, swallowing a dry, painful breath, "Wraith. Where is she?"

The monitor beside him beeped more prominently, no doubt following his pulse as the dread flooded him. She'd taken the bullet meant for him, and more. Her shields were as empty as his, but she'd taken-

"Ma?"

His voice was afraid. He sounded young and broken, and his eyes were watering already because he could see in her eyes what she was scared to say. His blood rushed in his ears.

"… No." he pleaded.

The sound drowned out by his own breathing, his organs trying to climb up his throat as his head replayed it, his shield cracking, the face of the soldier who was going to kill him, the crash as he was knocked to the ground with an empty gun. The gunfire. The smoke.

" _No._ "

Wraith, bleeding, unconscious when he pushed her aside, the pool of her blood soaking through his combats. The devastating sound of the grenade, and the victory siren. The medics who wouldn't let him near her when they retrieved her from the floor.

A pit opened in his soul, hungry and cold. When he tried to struggle into a seated position, the machine beeped unhappily and his mother squeezed his arm and tried to press him back into the bed.

"Elliot Witt, would you listen to me?"

He looked to her with wild eyes, snapped from his own head by her fierce tone as she crushed his hand between her own.

"Wraith," he answered stupidly, unable to craft any other helpful word, " _no,_ not- not- not her, not-."

His air was drying up, fast. He couldn't have lost her. He couldn't. No.

"She's down the hall in Intensive." came the answer, exasperated as though it wasn't the first time she'd said it, "It doesn't look good," she warned, "but she's alive."

The 'for now' didn't need said. It was scrawled across her face when he looked at her.

"Pathfinder just left to get me some tea." she changed the subject, "But he's been here since they moved you from surgery and I don't think he's left since."

Tears rose in his eyes as he blinked at her, at the sympathy in her face. Her eyes were red, her clothes were rumpled. She hadn't been far, either. Later, he would feel guilty that the first thing he asked of her was his partner. But not now, not in the face of the pain in her eyes, in the face of what she wasn't saying.

His chest ached.

"I have to see her."

"Eli…"

His throat was closing up at rapid pace and words were rough and jagged against his raw throat. Time felt suddenly pressing, shifting and filtering away as his heart raced. The machine sounded increasingly irritable, beeping louder.

"Eli, calm down."

"I can't." he said, struggling against his numb body to sit, "I _can't_."

"You _will_." she answered, a firm strength in her frown when she pushed him back into the mattress.

Perhaps rough of her, but it tore him from the building hysteria as he stared back at her helplessly. He was going to cry, he could feel it burning in the back of his eyes.

"You'll lie right here until you're cleared to leave the bed. You almost died."

"I almost die a lot." he snapped, regretting it as soon as it was out of his mouth, watching as she flinched.

The room was silent and icy and she drew away, holding only his hand as she stared at the monitor, avoiding his eyes. He didn't have time for this, or brain-function. All his head wanted to do was yelp _Wraith! Wraith! Wraith!_ round and round like a train on a short track. He had to get to her.

"Ma…"

"I will not lose another son to his own stupidity." she said, sharp and quiet.

Elliot held his tongue, unable to look at her face as the image of his brothers' faces burning brightly on the back of his eyelids when he blinked. He squeezed her hand numbly, but she made no move to return it.

It had been a long time since they'd spoken about it. The uneasy truce between them threatened to shatter, so he kept his silence and tried not to think about them, or Wraith, as he counted his breaths and willed his heart to calm down.

He knew she hated the Games. He knew she did. And he hated that he hurt her every time he went back into that place. But it was who he was. He didn't know, anymore, who to be outside. When he wasn't Mirage, when he was only Elliot, he didn't know how to live like that anymore. Not without the knowledge that his next Game was on the horizon, not without Wraith and Pathfinder, reminders of who he was.

Elliot hated to hurt his mother, but he was who he was.

And who he was, was a guy whose sanity relied on the continuing existence of the people he needed. He couldn't lose Wraith. He couldn't. He hadn't even apologised for telling her he- She couldn't die, not now, not when he still had so much left to say and so many- so many- He bit down the burning need to go to her, and he sat in silence as tears finally leaked down his face. She let him cry, giving him at least the grace of not acknowledging it.

"I told you," her voice came eventually, gentle and apologetic, "that I thought she'd die for you."

Elliot swallowed another sob and turned away. He didn't need her to remind him that he was the reason Wraith was…

She wasn't dying. She _wasn't_. She couldn't die. Not her. Not after everything, and not after weeks of radio silence because he'd fucked up and let his feelings slip. He had to fix this. He couldn't- He couldn't imagine life without her. She was his best friend. She was his best friend and the only image of her his mind could produce was the one he didn't want to see; her bleeding out on the floor from the shot meant for _him_ , because she'd taken it to give him the chance to reload his gun, and now she was- she was-

Elliot turned his face away from his mother when she tried to soothe him, drawing his hand from hers and clenching his eyes shut against the guilt. He pretended to be asleep when Pathfinder returned, because he didn't have the energy to face the robot's endless cheer, knowing Wraith was hurt so badly.

~.~


End file.
